“Ssh,” the freighter owner growled.
“Sorry,” Erick whispered. “I may have overexerted myself.”
“Who in the hells are you people?”
“I’m Jelena, and that’s Erick. We came to rescue you.”
“Well, shit, that’s working well, isn’t it?”
“Stage One hasn’t gone exactly according to plan, but we’re hoping Stage Two will be inspiring. Right, Erick?”
Erick groaned. It was all he could manage when it felt like someone was hosting an axe-throwing competition inside his skull. His stomach growled, letting him know his brain had been using more than its fair share of his body’s reserves.
“Erick agrees,” Jelena said. “What’s your name?”
It was too dark to see if the freighter owner sent her an incredulous look, but Erick could almost feel it in the air.
“Yun,” the man finally said.
Clunks and clanks came from outside as people searched for them. It wouldn’t be long before someone thought to grab that life-form detector from the dead man.
“What are they after?” Jelena asked.
“That cargo hold full of high-tech Alliance weapons,” Yun growled. “Never should’ve gotten in bed with the Alliance. Not that they gave me any choice.”
“What happened?” Jelena bumped Erick with her elbow.
What was she doing? Oh, she’d picked up the dog and was stroking it. That figured. Erick was ninety-nine percent certain this so-called rescue mission wouldn’t have happened if not for the canine presence trapped on the freighter.
Yun snorted. “Got caught smuggling in their territory one too many times. They said I could spend the next twenty years in jail or help them out with a little problem they were having. I’d been fixing to retire in a few years, not die being felt up by horny imperial sympathizers in some all-boys mining camp.”
Erick had seen the grizzled owner in the light before they’d been shut in this closet, and he thought the odds were slim of anyone willingly feeling anything of his. He kept the thought to himself since the man was talking. Assuming he was telling the truth. Given the way he grunted and groaned in pain after every sentence, lying probably wasn’t on his mind. He had the sound of a man who was sure death was imminent, and maybe he would even welcome it.
“Why,” Jelena asked, “did they want to put such a valuable cargo of weapons on a battered ship that looks like…”
“Like what?” the owner snarled.
“Well, it’s old, isn’t it? And shouldn’t it have more than a crew of one?”
“It’s not that old. There are lots of older freighters. And it’s not just one. There’s Woofus.”
“Woofus?" Erick asked.
Was that the dog?
“What is this? Blackout Trivia? Who are you people, anyway? And why is there a big stick jammed into my back? You sound like a girl, but I’m having my doubts.”
“That’s my staff, sorry.” Jelena shifted, bumping Erick again. He was lucky he didn’t have a staff in his back.
“Not sure that alleviates my doubts,” the owner said.
“It’s a Starseer staff,” Erick said. “We have some unique talents. We may be able to help you if you finish telling us why these people are after you.” Speaking of doubts, Erick wondered if they had made a mistake. The man had admitted to being a smuggler. Should they even be helping him?
At least it had grown quiet outside. Maybe the imperials had given up on the search and were worrying about off-loading the cargo. Erick’s brain hurt too much to check.
“I might believe you if we weren’t locked in a closet together,” Yun said, sighing. “They’re just after the weapons. I think they want me dead so I can’t identify them later and let the Alliance know a large and well-armed band of old imperials are alive and plotting against them after all these years. I don’t think I was supposed to survive the crash.”
His head clunked back against the wall, and Erick grimaced. Just because it had grown quiet in the corridor didn’t mean they should be making noise in here.
“As to why the Alliance wanted to use my freighter and me and Woofus,” Yun continued, keeping his voice to a whisper, “I only know what I was told by some spit-polished fleet kid with more freckles than chin hair, but I gathered they’ve got a few spies in their military. Some of their heavily armored transport ships have been hit and successfully raided lately. They thought if they slipped a shipment through on my freighter, nobody would be expecting that. And since I’m a lowlife smuggler in their eyes, they didn’t care that much if I got killed. Though I gather they’ll be disappointed about the loss of the weapons. There’s some prototype stuff in there. Hells, I’m going to have to retire in another galaxy at this point. You think humans can survive in Andromeda at all? Maybe I can get on a—”
“No witnesses,” someone yelled from the corridor outside. “Find them, now.”
“…got the detector, Sarge.”
Boots hammered against the deck.
“They’re back there.”
Yun sighed, a defeated sigh.
Can you make a distraction in engineering, Erick? Jelena asked. She sounded distracted herself, her voice distant in his head. Something that will convince these people to run outside?
Erick grimaced at the idea of doing anything with his head aching so much. Why don’t you just put up your barrier, and we’ll walk out of here and back to town? They may shoot at us all the way, but I doubt they’ll follow us into the city.
As soon as he made the suggestion, he questioned it. Could Jelena hold her barrier and keep them safe all the way back to town? On foot? Erick imagined the bombers taking to the air and firing down at them from above as they ran across the sand. There was no way she could repel that kind of fire, even if some of his energy returned and he could help her.
I’m
